


Sistine

by 55anon (Anon)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anon/pseuds/55anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you are honest and undone, your eyes flash with dementor’s grief — that you were denied happiness you could only steal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sistine

You have always claimed that you loved me from the moment you set eyes on me. I have always known this to be false; children are incapable of love. Your saying it irritates me, as you well know. I suspect that is precisely why you insist on it so adamantly. I suspect I have become accustomed to it, as I have become accustomed to black woolen robes—they used to itch like the devil.

Your eyes glint and I know you are disingenuous, saying ‘love.’ I will never tell you that I… became _interested_ in you after I realized what you are. Before that discovery you were plain, as interesting to me as pasteurized milk: quiet, polite to a fault, reasonably intelligent but not particularly brilliant. You have always had a talent for disguising your deepest failings as amiable qualities.

Afterward—

Afterward, I was obsessed. In the space of one word you became the object of fascination, desire. I knew myself to be utterly depraved after the sound of your name echoed obscenely in the showers and I was wet, shuddering, gasping.

I can imagine the expression on your face—the closed, wry look you favor when you are trying to protect yourself from me.

I want to tell you; …

It is useless;

We were never much for words, fortunately. Bitter sarcasm and understatement—or should I call them lies by omission?—notwithstanding. You once said, looking up at the Sistine Chapel, that the dementor’s outstretched hand resembled the withered hand of God. I snorted, made some comment. For reasons that I to this day do not understand, you looked away and scarcely spoke another word. If I recall, you fucked me blind that night. I came screaming but you were silent with bloody lips. I have never desired to know more of your past; we share enough as it stands. It is a relief never to have to explain myself to you. Accounts are tiring.

Admittedly some things might have been—might be—easier if you and I had learned to speak without shredding the carpet, fracturing the tea service. I hate swallowing come; it looks too much like extracted memories. You maintain that there is nothing you like better and make a point of swallowing every drop. I distrust the claims you make. It is not you I trust but the wolf. As an animal, it cannot lie; it acts according to its enraged instincts. I have been hiding Belby’s work from you. The inevitable day you mention Wolfsbane is the day I become your potions brewer and cease all other roles. It is all but obligatory that I will perfect it to spite you. Belby’s work is shoddy, as always.

We are; …

At times I imagine one of your shirts, translucent to the point of dissolution. More gauze than cloth—you wear your shirts like bandages. Regrettably, your cardigan habit did not begin due to this fact; it might otherwise have been excusable. Washing is out of the question. It would destroy the cultures of blood gangrene. You have always accused me of similarly egregious crimes, that my nightshirts are held together with dead skin and grease. If I prefer us lying skin to skin it is no concern of yours. Your habit of smiling when I say more than you think I’ve meant to say is terribly condescending; I always know what I am saying.

I can hardly believe that I am thinking of saying; …

I could make a fortune selling your blood;

It has been some years since we fell, descended to this habit. Routine has settled to dust; you will never finish your periodicals. I have not been counting the months. You have been piling your side of the sitting room with fragments of coded correspondence written on material closer to sandpaper than parchment. The table is stained with tea rings. I despise your broken quills and inkpots of dried ink, the way you leave books scattered open around the house. I no longer think it odd to find myself in the loo, staring at your twisted arithmantic diagrams, Summoning parchment and pencil to dash off some calculations of my own.

This is where you find me—pants to my ankles, socks moulding, trousers in a corner, hectares of paper and alchemic tables on the washroom floor. You once told me I was Blake’s etching of Newton, then proceeded to fuck me until our fingers were stained with ink and papers soaked with come. I can still remember the tight smile you had on your face when a week later, we rowed spectacularly over it all: sex, arithmancy, your damned half thoughts and our damned condition.

Our damned condition; I pretend not to notice how much it hurts you when I call it that. You risk too much saying ‘love’ as it is, and I tell myself that I know you to be disingenuous. When you are honest and undone, your eyes flash with dementor’s grief—that you were denied happiness you could only steal…

Our damned condition;

Six years ago, Albus asked—and we could not refuse—to break the Curse of Erised; …

The pipes are clanging again.

You insist on listening to the wireless in the kitchen.

Six years ago Albus asked, and we could not refuse, to break the Curse of Erised—the magic of mirrors being laughably simple in concept; terrible when watching a vision of the heart’s deepest, ugliest desire until it burns to all consuming obsession. We discovered—running sheaves of diagnostic spells at witching hour, shaking, sweating, swearing at each other with migraines and exhaustion pumping adrenaline—a single glance harms no one. One reflection undoes nothing, only amplifies existing desire. So the parchments, and our calculations, say.

The distinction between knowledge and experience: the Mirror warped the room and you looked up at me from a wolf’s lidded eyes when we felt a reach to grasp. My desires warped with it, recalling the sound of your name echoing against me in the showers. Our first, you had more foresight; you held off on fucking me against the Mirror. I sucked you, with teeth, spit you out on your own hand, came on that same hand. You had more instinct; you smeared us, in runes, over the surface for payment and protection.

The first glance induces curiosity, denial. It is the third, fourth look that captivates and holds. We know the accounts, and experience: the need builds slowly. Over the space of months, sometimes years, the mirror’s magic lies dormant until a catalytic event, usually traumatic, draws the wizard into the Mirror’s power. The trauma is usually extraordinary; enough to break the strongest men, drive the wisdom of mages to madness. Witches and banshees have withstood their trials better, having been accustomed to persecution and powerlessness. Regardless the duration of resistance, in the end they fall. Desire seems to provide all answers. Nothing comes to matter but fulfillment.

The runes you smeared I can still see disappearing into the Mirror. You have never explained your choices—time, love, ruin—only knew they were right. On nights you think I am dead to the world, you trace them into the skin of my back, touching my spine to bless and curse. This is how you bind me, how I let myself be bound. It is how one defeats desire.

For desires are fickle things, and desperate. Thus the desolation of men, witches, who are bound to cursed desires.

And like all antidotes of deadly poisons, the remedy is worse than the affliction.

Worse, because I trust you to kiss a vampire to stake his heart; you have done so before, without hesitation. I do not trust you grant me the same reprieve. You would flay my skin first, burn me with light, then drive stakes into my wrists and ankles, all the while saying ‘love, love.’

Time, because our relationship is not common knowledge. It is rather not knowledge at all. We prefer it this way, though inexplicably the circle of our mutual acquaintances who we mutually tolerate has grown. I am annoyed, but no longer flinch when I hear your name attached to mine—Lupin, Snape—like an ill wind preceding the plague. We should have published separate papers, divided the spoils and reserved privileges for our respective journals. I count it a small mercy that you still send your own Christmas cards and I still do not send any, though I feel I am somehow implicated when you sign your name on the cheques to pay for the gas. I prefer you secret—you have too few from me as it stands.

Ruin, because I do not know if this condition of years and routine is a consequence of the oaths or our desires. I am aware that the one does not exclude the other, though you prefer not to mention it at all. I suppose that having been ruled by the moon and your former companions, you are loath to give up your will to another inescapable compulsion. You are a monster bred from the things you failed to do.

I have built a cellar with chains. I am depraved, I chose my depravities. You would bring me down to your level and strip me of my choices asking, in that casual tone of yours, what real options did I have except to join the Dark Lord, except to betray him? You see my life as a rosary of inevitabilities. But I say: choosing the only option is still a choice. My life has been built on such choices; I am defined by them. You, when you regret, think back to all the choices you did not make. I see only the ones I did.

When I betrayed; when you were betrayed; …

Close quarters made you wary; intimacy makes you naked.

You have an insidious way of making yourself a permanent fixture in a house rotting on its bricks.

We found the counter; we invented it. The answer was waiting for us—at once an answer and a curse. Once the enchantment is broken, the heart’s depths will be veiled and desire’s grasp weakened. But the Mirror’s basic function is to reflect. It will reflect something more ambiguous, shallow, urgent and immediate. You wrote the rune first, acting on foresight and instinct. You did not have enough foresight to see this; to see us.

Seven years of plenty, seven of famine. We will twist as our oath runs its course.

Six years ago Albus asked and we answered. We published. It rippled through grimoires. Against our better instincts history realigned to write our conclusion.

There may yet be a way to break these commitments. We are practiced in self sabotage. I know myself to have the upper hand: my Patronus has never changed. You have never revealed yours; at times I speculate you cannot produce one due to your nature. I prefer this explanation over others. The dementors in the Sistine Chapel made you shudder—when we approached Michelangelo’s heavenly skull your eyes flicked to my forearm. That night you fucked me as if to claim; from whom? From what? Your body bears as many broken vows as mine.

How Albus plans to utilize the Mirror; … I have ceased speculations. You cannot help but count the refractions we will endure.

A marriage, a son. Four deaths, one betrayal. Rise and fall of the Dark Lord.

Our prospects were never very good.

Recently you have been measuring me with your eyes and telling me our histories don’t matter; we have each other. Implicit is ‘will always,’ though you will never say it. This is true enough. We will always hate each other, hunt each other, haunt each other; if our histories did not ensure this, Erised will. I wonder what you hope to gain from saying this to me, as though you could delay the payment of years. The Mirror will wrench until we are broken in curses. You are a Dark creature. You have never asked for reassurance I do not give. That you are asking now makes my fingers twitch.

Still I want—

I find I want to—

Magic requires sacrifice, without exception. We cast the vows out of war-worn carelessness. You will always say it was not, but you cannot convince me otherwise: having lost practically everyone, you counted yourself worthless. Perhaps the same could be said of me. Before we bound each other in curse oaths, your eyes gleamed amber; mine were black as tar. You did not know—could not have known—it would lead to this. I would not have agreed if I had; it is a surprise to find oneself lycanthropic by proxy.

Seven years of plenty, seven years of famine. The Mirror will twist as it takes its course. We have theorized we might direct the course and emerge intact. You touch my brow at night and know we are wrong.

You have always claimed that you loved me from the moment you set eyes on me. I have always known you meant I, and me; seeing me, you have been claiming. I want to tell you—I want more than seven years. I have wanted more than seven years. I want to tell you—if this curse molded me, I am no less who I am. You are no less who you always have been. When this curse turns, we will be wretched.

I can see myself staring at your back. You are humming tunelessly without your cardigan. You are accustomed to being wrenched apart at the seams each moonrise. You have never said, but I have always known, that it never becomes easier. The day you mention Wolfsbane will never come; I have already perfected Belby’s primitive formula and will provide once the curse turns. Your lycanthropy was always a rogue variable but our arithmancy is flawless. I have perfected it as far as it can be perfected. It is… the only promise I can give to you.

We have both known ourselves to be convicted men. You pretend you do not notice that I have never told you. I have been ignoring the glances you think I cannot see, the expression you wear when you think I am not guarded. I have never told you because I fear I will say worse in reflection. I thought you knew this; I do not know how to tell you. There is no more terrible thing than love. It devours children; from whence emerge our aged deformities.

I can only say;

I could have made a fortune selling your blood; I wanted more than seven years.

You see me watching you humming in the kitchen. Your expression shutters like feet tripping upstairs. I do not know what is written on my face but you will come to kiss me and I will not refuse. The dementor’s hands look like the shriveled hands of God. I have never known myself to be a gentle man, nor eloquent. That night you shuddered and your bleeding lips left trails. I slept with your sweat, blood, semen, hair… tears. To this day, you have never told me.

I prefer it that way. When the Dark Lord returns, I will give him this memory: your glinting eyes and laughing face saying ‘I love you,’ and the rage that fills me each time you say it. Someday you will tell the world you neither like nor dislike me, and I will feel it to be true.

The greatest triumph of the curse will be the hatred I will feel when faced with your indifference.

That is why I will never say I love you.


End file.
